There are many forms of diet plans to suit your different needs, but unlike other weight loss diets, circadian-based eating is a way of living that has long-term benefits. It is a lifestyle that is firmly tied to our body’s natural rhythm.
Our body runs like clockwork. It loves being on a schedule, especially one that is baked into our DNA. And through the revolution, we have gotten used to a certain rhythm of living. We wake up with the sun and go to sleep at sunset.
But following our natural rhythms is difficult nowadays. In today’s digital era, 80 percent of our waking time is buried in our smartphones, and other times we binge eat processed foods till we go to bed. This mode of living has called forth many illnesses and diseases as well.
But altering one facet of our lifestyle, we can automate other health areas as well. By aligning our eating habits with our body’s natural circadian rhythm, we can reset our internal clock and optimize our health.
What Is Circadian Rhythm and Circadian-Based Diet?
We humans and most living things, including animals, microorganisms, and even fungi, have a circadian rhythm. It is our innate 24-hour master clock that works as a signaling center that responds to environmental cues like light change and temperature.
Circadian rhythm is governed by an isolated area of our brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a part of the hypothalamus, which serves as the body’s master clock. It carries out the essential tasks in our body, like managing our sleep-wake pattern, hormone production, and other bodily functions that coordinate our daily rhythms.
When a certain cue is experienced, your body triggers the release of hormones, affecting your metabolism, sleep, and even your mood. Like when the sun sets down, your body starts producing melatonin, preparing your body for sleep.
Circadian-based diet involves eating all your meals within a specific time window. It requires choosing a set time frame according to your lifestyle to eat and fast each day.
The approach of this eating type stands on the concept that our body is better structured at performing most of the functions when our internal clock is in sync with the light and dark circles of the environment.
Typically, in this diet, the eating and fasting window is divided by 8-16 hours rules. You have to emphasize consuming all your calories and nutrients within 8 hours of daylight, i.e., between 7 am to 7 pm, and fasting the remaining hours.
This means taking most of your nutrition during breakfast and lunch, making it a larger portion of your meal, and tapering off your consumption as the day progresses.
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The Impact of Circadian-Based Diet on Digestion and Metabolism
Our body is ruled by an internal biological clock that regulates and maintains periodicity in various physiological processes, which include cardiovascular, behavioral, gastrointestinal tract, and different metabolism processes.
Our body’s gastrointestinal tract (GI) also has an internal clock known as the gut clock, which runs in sync with circadian rhythms to influence different functions such as digestion, nutrition absorption, and excretion.
Eating along with these rhythms prepares your body for predictable environmental changes, such as the day and night cycle and the availability of nutrients during your scheduled eating period.
This makes our body better equipped to break down food, absorb nutrition, and turn it into energy because our digestive system is more efficient during the daytime and slows down at night as our sleep hormone melatonin rises in response to getting dark.
Similar to the digestive system, circadian rhythms, and its based diet schedule also greatly affect the metabolism process.
Metabolism is a chemical process that takes place in the body’s cells, which works to turn your food into energy. This energy is needed to complete a number of bodily functions like performing daily chores, growth, repair, and breathing.
By eating in alignment with the rhythm, our body becomes more efficient in processing and utilizing energy. We can better support our body’s metabolic process and help regulate hormones related to appetite and metabolism, such as thyroid, insulin, ghrelin, and leptin, which can contribute to a healthier and improved metabolic profile.
Conversely, irregular eating habits can disrupt our body’s internal clock, which can have adverse effects on the digestive system and metabolism.
With disrupted metabolism and digestion our body may struggle to process the consumed calories and other hormonal functions, which can increase your risk of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders.
Tips for Implementing a Circadian-Based Diet Schedule in Your Routine
1. Eat Your Meals at Consistent Predictable Time
Managing time is essential while implementing a circadian eating schedule that aligns with your body’s natural rhythm.
When you eat your meals at a consistent predictable time each day, it prepares your body to anticipate food intake. This allows better secretion of digestive enzymes that can promote better nutrient absorption.
Spacing meals evenly, maintains a stable blood sugar level throughout the day, which keeps you less likely to experience intense hunger and can stave off mindless snacking. Whereas, irregular meal timing leads to erratic blood sugar fluctuation and also disturbs your body’s efficiency to processing food, causing discomfort and potential nutrient deficiencies.
Hence, creating a fixed meal schedule offers an overall lifestyle organization. It can help you build structure into your routines that support healthy eating habits and establish a more sustainable approach to nourishment.
2. Gradually Reduce Your Eating Window
A circadian-based diet schedule is a time restricting eating which is the core of circadian optimization. In this, you need to manage a particular eating and fasting window.
If you are new to a circadian-based diet, it is best to start this diet based on your lifestyle pattern or you can start with a 12-hour eating and a 12-hour fasting rule. This means you can eat during the first 12 hours of your day, such as 8 am to 8 pm, and fasting the remaining 12 hours. You can count your eating time from the first sip of your morning drink to the last meal of the day.
Once you are comfortable with a 12-hour eating window, you can then gradually decrease your eating time to 10 and then 8 hours. This means consuming all your daily calories within the first 10 or 8 hours of the day, such as 9 am to 7 pm or 10 am to 6 pm. But make sure not to reduce your eating window to less than 8 hours.
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3. Front Load Your Calories
Our body’s digestion and metabolism process is tightly linked with the circadian rhythms. So their function is highest a few hours after waking up in the morning,
Fueling your body with different nutrients and minerals at the metabolism’s peak hours will provide your body with ample energy for the day and also help you keep a robust circadian rhythm.
To adopt a circadian-based diet schedule, focus on including the majority of your nutrients during the earlier meals of the day.
Start your day with a balanced and substantial breakfast to kickstart your metabolism. Consume a lunch that includes high-quality protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats to sustain your energy level throughout the afternoon. Keep your dinner simple and smaller while completely cutting down on late-night snacking.
4. Plan Your Evening Meal
As the day progresses metabolism and digestive performance declines. Eating heavy meals when your digestive system isn’t at its best can increase your chance of weight gain. This problem is more unmanageable for night shift workers and individuals who have to travel across different time zones.
To better manage your diet, try to avoid carb-rich and processed food at night at least. Plan your evening meal that aims for light and easily digestible meals that provide sustainable nourishment without overburdening your digestive system, like lean proteins, vegetables, and complex carbs.
5. Avoid Late Night Eating
One of the non-negotiable aspects of implementing a circadian-based diet is abstaining from any midnight munching.
Avoiding late dinner or frequent snacking a few hours before sleep helps your body move into a fasting state. At night our body enters into the restorative stage. During this time eating can spike your blood sugar level.
Since insulin is produced in lower concentrations between midnight to early morning, it doesn’t work as well to move glucose from your bloodstream to other cells. As a result, most of the glucose is restored into your body, which leads to weight gain and risk of early onset of type 2 diabetes.
Instead of allowing your body to rest and restore cellular repair and metabolic health, you are bargaining your organs into overtime. And since your body organs are rather focused on digestion and turning your food into energy, they get less time to repair.
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6. Maintain a Fixed Sleep Schedule
Your daily sleeping and waking up schedule determine the effect it has on your metabolism, and mainly your circadian rhythms.
Lack of sleep affects the role of leptin and ghrelin hormones. These hormone’s main function is to regulate your eating drive and then send fullness cues, which helps maintain a balance between food intake and energy expenditure.
When you are sleep deprived, it can raise your ghrelin level, which can increase the feeling of hunger, making you crave more high-calorie foods. And a lower leptin level can disrupt its function to help you maintain a healthy weight in the long run. So maintaining proper sleep hygiene is one of the key importance while following a circadian-based diet schedule.
7. Include High-Quality Nutrients in Your Diet
Make a nutrient-dense, whole-food part of your regular meal. A balanced diet featuring quality proteins, healthy fats, and complex carbs delivers essential nutrients and powerful antioxidants that your body needs to thrive.
Opt for food rich in fiber. Adding high-fiber food helps create good gut bacteria that increase your gut microbiomes, and produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which may help strengthen the brain-gut connection, which can help to control your impulsive food craving.
Important Note: When starting a circadian-based diet, you might feel a sudden increase in hunger, low energy, or mood swings, depending on how out of sync you are with your circadian rhythm and other medical history you already have. It is always advisable to seek your physician or dietitian’s guidance or begin any treatment plan they might advise you before getting started.
Reset Your Body by Optimizing Your Body’s Natural Rhythm
Starting and following a circadian-based diet is not a once-a-time crash course in weight loss, but rather it is a lifestyle change for maintaining long-term wellness, not only considering what you eat, but also how and when you eat.
Syncing your meal schedule with your internal clock requires a great deal of discipline and time to adapt, but as long as you are consistent and can be sustainable, this approach to eating that aligns with your body’s natural cycle can reset and maintain balance within your internal systems.
